The last expression in this passage evidently means moisture which is charged with earthy matter in solution; for Aristotle says in the same treatise that seawater "has much more body" than drinking-water.[409] Still speaking of spontaneous generation he says a little further on:-- "Whoever would inquire aright should ask: What product in such cases answers to that material principle which in the female is a certain animal excretion,[410] potentially similar to what it came from? That excretion is quickened by the principle derived from the male, which thus perfects the animal. In the present case what should be likened to that excretion, and whence and what is the quickening principle which answers to the principle from the male? Now we must assume that, even in animals which procreate, the heat within the animal[411] separates and concocts, and thus makes out of the nourishment which enters the animal the excretion which is the beginning of the embryo. Such is the case with plants likewise; although in these and in some animals there is no need of the principle imparted by the male, for this they have within and mingled with themselves; whereas in most animals the excretion aforesaid stands in need of that principle. The nourishment of some is water and earth, that of others is derived from water and earth; so that what the heat in animals[412] prepares out of their nourishment, the heat of the season in the circumambient air combines by concoction out of the sea and the earth, and puts together.[413] But so much of the psychical principle as is included or separated within the air[319] constructs and quickens[414] the embryo. In like manner are put together such plants as arise by spontaneous generation."[415] The doctrine that in sexual generation the semen furnishes soul and generative heat but none of the matter[416] of which the embryo consists, renders logical the view, which Aristotle would seem to hold, that it is soul from the air and generative heat from the sun which in spontaneous generation represent the derivatives from the male.[417] The presence about us of "the psychical principle," thus diffused, may well seem startling to a modern biologist; but we may remind ourselves that in ancient times many believed the soul to be conveyed by the air into even the higher animals; even into man himself, even man's "understanding" reaching him thus.[418] Indeed, not only the words "_pneuma_" and "_spiritus_," as we have learned, but also the Greek and Latin words for "soul," viz.: "_psyche_" and "_anima_," meant originally simply "breath." Let us recall the words of scripture, which seem so vivid to one who watches the change in a new-born child as the first breath is taken: "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."[419]